I grew up a Yankee fan, I favor Pitchers whenever possible, I am a stathead, and my dream job is to be a GM for an MLB franchise. In the summer, I go to MLB games and catch baseballs. In the winter, I write about what teams are doing to get better or worse. I try to be positive and unbiased in my writing, but that isn't always possible when evaluating teams truthfully.

I really thought that the Brewers lost enough talent to hinder their progress made in the acquisitions. What I didn’t account for is the progress their players would make. Both Prince Fielder and Ryan Braun were better than they were in 2010. I don’t know how much better the numbers were, but they were both MVP candidates while none was in 2010.

I think that most of the reason is that I got this prediction so wrong (which wasn’t that wrong, relatively speaking) is becauseI was stuck on how many net wins I thought they had added. Actually, if you go by the net wins last offseason, I might have actually been a little optimistic, because they lost so many player last season. Sure, they weren’t top-of-the-line players, but they were mostly above average, and not players you are dying to get rid of.

All in all, I made a good intellectual decision, but if you followed this team, there was something magical about this team. Some were put off by how they expressed it, but they had some true synergy, which is why I picked them for the World Series once the Phillies got knocked out. I think that they would have appeared there too, if they hadn’t run into a team that was a little more magical.

I visited Milwaukee in August, and I can’t think of a better, louder environment than I was in. I think the fans could feel how special this team was, too. I’ve always kinda of liked the Brewers, and I’m disappointed what has happened to them with the loss of Fielder, and the probable loss of Braun.

I actually wrote this entry a little after Adam Wainwright went down to Tommy John Surgery. So, had I written the entry in early March, I probably would have been almost right on. Even though I made a small deal about him going down in the entry, I was slightly doubting my decision to do so. Just the previous season, Wainwright was one of the top 5 pitchers in the National League, if not all of baseball. I think the reason is that I didn’t react as much as I should have, is that the Cardinals had what I perceived to be a really good rotation other than Wainwright.

I think the obvious answer, for those who pay closer attention to Baseball, as to why the Cardinals did succeed like they did was Lance Berkman. They got a player they thought to be on a downward slope and ended up with a near MVP candidate. He wasn’t the NL Comeback Player of the Year for nothing. Personally, the Cardinals were one of the two top road teams I saw in 2011, if not the top road teams I saw, and Lance Berkman was the guy to hit a ball to me in Right Field of whatever stadium I was in.

All this said, the Cardinals were very lucky to make it into the playoffs. They were a below average team in the first half of the season, and had the Braves won two of their last 5, they wouldn’t have had the chance to make it into the playoffs. Also, although I congratulate them for winning and appreciate what a World Series they gave us, the Cardinals winning the World Series yet again with the lowest win total in the NL just goes to show why it is meaningless to win as many games as possible during the season when even the worst team can win the playoffs (World Series). Basically, that’s it.

I really don’t know where to start with this entry. For whatever reason, I detailed the Reds losing talent at almost every position, yet I only downgraded them one win. In addition, I should have expected either a fluctuation up or down with this team because of their youth. I should have put this in the first entry as a provision in the first entry.

This is the only way I can explain being off by the amount I was off by. Other than that I really have nothing to say. I wish I did, I’m kind of disappointed by how short this entry is.

I actually thought this would be a stallish year for the Nationals waiting for both Stephen Strasburg and Bryce Harper to come up. However, the Nationals had a surprisingly strong lineup. Whenever I was in the Outfield for their At-Bats, I was always confident that I could possibly get a ball hit to me within three hitters. Actually, Jayson Werth was one of the weaker parts of the lineup.

Also, I think part of the reason they improved so much was via the simple improvement on defense. Can anyone remember the years the Nationals were REALLY bad? It was almost hilarious some of the error they would make on defense to lose games. Their Pitching still has to improve in the rotation, but the virtual additon of Stephen Strasburg shouldn’t be that bad.

Another thing, the second most important addition I had for the Nationals last offseason didn’t even play for most of the season. I had Adam LaRoche being the second biggest impact player the Nationals acquired behind Jayson Werth. Of course, the Nationals eventual MVP for the year now plays at 1st Base: Michael Morse. However, if you don’t remember, I went to the Nationals’ last three home games this past season (the links are here, here, and here starting with the last game and going backwards. Also, for newer readers, I usually do take a bunch of pictures with the games I got to, but I lost all of the pictures for those three games. A better example of one of my entries for a game can be found: here.) and Michael Morse was being put in the Outfield. Yes it is definitely not his defensive strong suit, but I think this is a sign that they expect to have him in the Outfield next season.

Anyway, the Nationals, I think we can agree, were a surprising team in 2011 and I did not predict they would do this well.

Ok, so maybe I was a bit too overreactive to the Mets. After all, they did have 79 wins in 2010 and I gave them a B- grade, which meant I saw it as a sucessful offseason. However, I did make my prediction on the notion that the Mets would be unloading both Carlos Beltran AND Jose Reyes. Yes, that Jose Reyes who had the highest WAR among BOTH leagues among this season’s Free-Agent class at somewhere in the 7 range. Also, the Mets played above my expectations in most other fields except pitching.

I really don’t have much of an explanation as to how. Why? As crazy as this may seem, I attended less games at Citi Field (13) this past season than I did the year before (15). It’s crazy, because in 2011 I attended 46 games whereas I attended only (I love being able to say that) 20 games total. The reason being that Citi Field just stresses me out in general. It really wasn’t a fun place for me any more for a variety of reasons. As a result, I tried to avoid it at all costs and go to Nationals Park instead. So, i really wasn’t able to get a good grip on what the Mets were, because if I don’t go to the games, last season I was just too busy between going to games, writing entries, doing community service, etc to do much else at all e.g. watch Baseball TV.

So, I really just fed off the sentiment of the rest of New York in this prediction. Everyone held the Mets as a laughing stock and I made a prediction amidst all of that. Thus, my prediction reflected the panic/mocking and I didn’t use my head as I did with most of the other entries. I think the Mets will be a…Wait, this isn’t the Offseason Recap and Review entry. I guess you’ll just have to wait until then to see what I think of the Mets’ 2012 season.

Like this:

First off, here, is the entry horribly mangled by the transition to WordPress. It just happens that some pictures in certain entries appear as several in this particular entry appear as they were lost in the transition from Two Apart to WordPress.

Predicted Record: 91-96 wins

Actual Record: 89-73

This was pretty much right on because most of my prediction revolved around the acquisition of Dan Uggla, who was absolutely wretched compared to expectation this season. I mean, yes, he did have a 33 game hitting streak from the beginnings of July to the beginnings of April, but do you realize that despite that he had a .233 average for the season. This just shows how terrible his first half was that he could get at least 1 hit for 33 games straight and still not have an average above .250.

Imagine he actually hit his usual .260-.280. We would have a different World Series champion this year. It wouldn’t necessarily be the Braves, but they were the team the Cardinals beat out to get into the playoffs in the first place. Despite all of this, I still have no idea how the Braves didn’t make the playoffs. After the first game in their penultimate series against the Nationals (which I was at all three games of) the Braves magic number (number of their wins+ Cardinals losses to get into the playoffs) was 2 or 3. The weirder thing: a Nationals fan in the bleachers the second game was telling a Braves fan that nothing would give him more joy than to keep them from the playoffs, which looked like a fantasy at that point.

Anyway, I pretty much nailed the Braves if Dan Uggla would have played up to expectations.

So I was 3 games off. I actually think that was pretty good. The only knock I have on my prediction is that their rotation actually was THAT good. I thought that someone was bound to have an off year and their rotation would be a little less spectacular, but they did not fail to disappoint. Even when a starter was injured, they had a hidden starter in the rotation in Vance Worley.

I will stand by my statement, though, that the Phillies’ lineup was nothing spectacular like the years previous when it was hailed as: “the only American League lineup in the National League”. Other than this, I really have nothing to say about my prediction but that I did underestimate the Phillies even with what I thought were pretty high expectations. I did predict they would be in the playoffs and I apologize. I think I am going to stop predicting the playoffs, because I am from the school of thought that the playoffs are very much luck dictated and the Regular Season is what shows the true best team. I’m not saying that the playoffs are bogus, but there should be no way that the Cardinals should have beaten the Phillies given their respective records. The playoffs do provide great entertainment value (just look at this past season), but it is not the best team that always wins the World Series. The worse team of any given match-up has a reasonable chance of beating the better team no matter the discrepancy.

Anyway, I underestimated them a little, but I did get the Phillies’ prediction mostly right.

First off, here, is the link to the entry where I didn’t get carried away in the (at the time I wrote the entry) magic of the “Buck Show”.

Predicted Record: 70-75 wins

Actual Record: 69-93

Yes , I did give the Orioles an A+. Yes, I did only increase their win total by 4-9 games.Let me explainthe logic. The Orioles were on their way to at least an 100 loss season before Buck Showalter stepped in as manager. I knew that Buck was agreat manager, but I also knew he couldn’t keep winning at the level he was at the end of the 2010 season, because he had never done so with a team of the skill level of the Orioles. Therefore, I lowered their record of last season by 5 games to 61-101, gave the Orioles 3 of those wins back for the buck factor, to raise their record to 64-98, then examined the net wins added on by their acquisitions and came to the decision that they were a 70-75 win team. Certain players’ undeperformances (Cough, cough, Kevin Gregg, cough, cough) then lead to their underachieving my expectations for them this year and fall just below the record range I predicted for them.

I still stand by my point that the Orioles helped their potential win total last season more than the Red Sox did. Case in point, what match-up ended the Red Sox’s season? The Red Sox may have boosted their potential win total for next year or the years afterward, but the Orioles are much better than they would have been had last offseason never happened. I certainly stand by my point now more than ever when I say that the Orioles *need* starting pitching to win even more games. I was in Baltimore for only three games and I could tell that this was the case.

Again, not a totally correct prediction, but I did very accurately predict how well the Orioles did in 2011.

Some how someway I predicted the Blue Jays’ 2011 pretty accurately. Let me explain my relationship with the Blue Jays: I do admire them as a team, but because of the circumstances (distance and the TV situations this creates), I pay attention to them probably the least out of the teams in the AL East with the Rays a close second.

Truth be told, I have little to no idea how the Blue Jays won their games. The extent of this knowledge is propbably that Jose Bautista was really hot in the first half and ended up with 50-some odd HRs.

I can’t really tell you how, but I was right in predicting the Blue Jays’ season even if I did pay less attention to them than I normally do in most seasons. Although, I do stick with my prediction of them getting better in the next few years as a result of Alex Anthropoulos, as he has demonsrtated his above-average ability to piece together what seem to be great trades (you can’t really evaluate any trade until all of the players in the trade leave the respective teams they were traded to).

This is yet another one of those teams that really confused me when it came to this season. However, as you can see by the margin in records, they didn’t completely fool me. For example, Adrian Gonzalez didn’t quite live up to my expectations, but he was in a ballpark range of what I predicted (click the link to the original entry at the top of this entry to find out what said expectations were). Then there were players like Jacoby Ellsbury and Carl Crawford who completely defied my expectations for them.

The result of these unpredictable swings being, the Red Sox underachieving a bit and not getting into the playoffs, leading to a mass leadership upturning this past offseason. However, I DID predict that the rotation of the Red Sox was not the unstoppable force people were predicting it to be, I’m not saying I knew they were eating chicken, but the pitchers in their rotation did not make it great by any means.

So that is that. I sort off predicted what the Red Sox were going to do in 2011, even if I was off by a few wins like most people.

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Ballhawking Sites

Cook & Sons' Baseball Adventures
Although most ballhawking blogs are, Todd Cook’s narrative of his and his sons’ adventures going to ballparks is the closest thing there is to a father-son-baseball written reality show.

Hit Tracker
An amazing tool that was responsible for my success at Yankee Stadium in 2010. See Season end review (Nov, 1, 2010) if you want to see the difference @ Yankee Stadium.

My Game Balls
The ballhawking community’s mode of communication and competetion

My mygameballs.com account
Specifically *my* account on mygameballs.com which has much more detailed stats than I have time to write about

Plouffe's New Hairdo
One of my new Minnesota friends, Tony Voda’s ballhawking/Twins/music-in-the-offseason-but-sometimes-during-the-season-too blog.

Steel City Ballhawk
A blog written by elite ballhawk, Nick Pelescak, about all of the games he attends, which is a ton since he is a season ticket holder at PNC Park.

The Ballhawker
The ballhawking blog of a fellow New York ballhawk, Chris Hernandez.

Zack Hample (The Baseball Collector)
Now If you are reading this blog there is a .00009 % chance that you haven’t visited this blog, but as a service to the reason this blog exists I want to have Zack add that .00009% to his viewership. It is the least I can do.

MLBlogs I Recommend and Follow

Ballparks on a Budget
Ever want to go to a baseball game outside of your local team but don’t want to empty the bank? Alicia Barnhart’s your girl with Ballparks on a Budget. She should know how to spend wisely in going to games because, well, she’s been to them all. Just last

Dodger Blue World
Just a great blog written by dedicated Dodger super-fan Emma Amaya.

Minoring In Baseball
A blog written by the father of just a family who are all fans of the West Michigan Whitecaps who is just a great guy in general: Michael David.

MLB.com Blogs Central
As the title kind of suggests, this blog is pretty much the center of the MLBlogs unvierse. It apply sometimes goes by the moniker: “MLBlogosphere”

The Ballpark Guide
A MUST-read for any MiLB afficionados, or even many MLB fans. Malcolm MacMillan goes to different ballparks all over and details his visit on the blog and writes tips for anyone going to that ballpark on his website (which can be found on the blog’s homep

The Next White Sox GM
If you were a baseball mind growing up, you may have gotten a comment from an elder female family member (usually grandma) saying, “You should be the one to run the team with all the knowledge you’ve got about baseball.” Well, here’s a kid who might just

The Unbiased MLB Fan
Matt Huddleston doesn’t root for the teams; he roots for the players. I wish I could say more, but I suspect any other explanation of his blog would be a multi-centennial-word ordeal.

Three Up, Three Down
One would assume not getting into the MLB Fan Cave is a sad experience. (Well, at least I would; I’ve never been old enough to apply.) However, this group of fans turned that usually-sad experience and turned it into a great blog where there are just a sl

MLBlogs I Recommend

Observing Baseball Classics

"The Baseball" Book Review
In this entry I reviewed/summarized the entirety of the book “The Baseball: Stunts, Scandals, and Secrets Beneath the Stitches” written by Zack Hample.

10/19/10 ALCS: Yankee Stadium
Sure I had no clue how to write it, but this was my first ballhawking entry ever and my only of 2010, so it falls under the category “classic”

Ballhawk Charities 2012
Where I went over the four ballhawk charities I had heard of at the beginning of the season as a way of helping them out by getting the word out.

Case Study on Morality in Baseball
A research paper I did way back in the summer of 2010. I don’t necessarily agree with everything I wrote back then anymore, but it does add an interesting perspective to things especially in today’s steroid talk.

Collected Baseball Knick-knacks
Quite simply: pretty much everything baseball-related that I had collected and managed to keep ahold of as of November, 20, 2011.

Dissecting/Deconstructing Baseballs
I’ve taken apart several baseballs before, and it was fun, so I decided to make a video of me taking apart a baseball and adding tips for other people to do so too.

Favorite MLB Players
I did probably one of my funner videos on who my favorite players were from the present day, when I first started watching baseball, and my favorite player that I never saw play at all.

Houlihan Park Tour and Snagging Analysis
This is my high school, Fordham Prep,’s home field, which being the manager of the varsity team for three years, I spent proabably more games here than at any other baseball field. So when I returned to my high school for a day, I took a quick tour of the

Observing Baseball Trivia
See the description of the link two links above, but modify it slightly so it fits this entry’s title.

Pitching Aces in the Playoffs
My first ever “real” entry that I ever wrote back on the surplus of star pitchers in the 2010 playoffs. It was pretty good considering I knew nothing about blogging, or writing in general for that matter.

Pure Genius
This is just me explaining how the Phillies got three aces of pitchers; nothing fancy. But it was me showing my first flash of general manager mind to the world, so that’s why I like it.

Sabermetrics (the explanation)
This was me explaining some simple sabermetric statistics for the people of the world who have heard of the stats but never really knew what significance they had/have over the more common metrics. I take pride in this because it can potentially educate s

Survey of Adults Perception of Baseball
I surveyed a bunch of my teacher as to which baseball player was there favorite; both in and outside of New York. It’s a bit more complex than that, but the only way to understand is to read the entry.

Tour Target Field in the Snow
Target Field is in Minnesota, so it only felt fitting that I should take at least one day to tour it while it was buried in the snow. And that’s what this entry was: a video of me going around Target Field while it was snowing and there was a ton of snow

Weird Observing Baseball Facts and Records
I may yet do this every year…and it would then become its own link category–but for the meantime–there is only one set of Observing Baseball Facts and Records, so it definitely goes under “Observing Baseball Classics”.

Blast from the Baseball Past

8/24/08 Dodgers at Phillies: Citizens Bank Park
My second ever game to CBP that ended with Pedro Feliz hitting a three-run walk-off home run while my dad and I were in the car because we had to catch a flight to Detroit seven hours later that same day in New York.

Obsevers of Baseball

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